Esther de Monteflores

Esther de Monteflores is a circus artist, physical performer, and choreographer based in Bellingham, Washington. In her work, Esther seeks a balance between technical skill and expressive movement. Circus arts allow her to create work that is both intimate and spectacular, using the inherent element of risk to focus attention and spark imagination.

Recently Esther’s unique take on circus has been seen in Seattle at Moisture Festival and SANCA (School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts), with The Bellingham Circus Guild in Bellingham, in Santa Fe, New Mexico with Wise Fool New Mexico’s Circus Luminous and See/Saw, at Toronto’s Harbourfront Theatre with Circus Sessions and in Chicago at the second annual Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival. In collaboration with writer Meredith Hambrock, Esther founded Deathbench Productions to create CLIMB, a 45 minute work of contemporary circus theater. CLIMB has been presented at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in 2015 and the Edmonton Fringe Festival in 2016.

Esther’s latest project is Tiny Cities, an absurd and whimsical celebration of Columba Livia, the common pigeon.

In 2014, she recieved a GAP to purchase rigging materials, safety equipment, a portable battery-powered amplifier and liability insurance  for a one-woman show outdoors. The show combines circus arts, puppetry, mask-work, dance, music and poetry. It follows two characters, a woman and a wolf, as they navigate their intersecting dream worlds. Masks and stilts transform the performer into a creature while the slack-rope, which is essentially a loose tight-wire, evokes images of walking on air, floating, hovering and at times turns the acrobat into a marionette. Every prop serves many purposes, a white sheet thrown over the slack-rope becomes a tent and then a puppet theater as well as a ghost, a flag, a shroud.